Jason Goodwin - The snake stone

“I don’t know. But if it wasn’t the serpents’ heads, why would he have needed Xani? And then, why was Xani murdered, too?”

Yashim ran his hands through his hair. “Xani. Amelie. Gyllius’s book. I feel as though I’m trying to re-create a rare and astonishing dish from a memory of how it tasted, Palewski. We have all these ingredients in the dish-but the flavor’s wrong, somehow.” He looked up. “Amelie told me something just now. Lefevre was a real doctor. Not a doctor of archaeology.”

“A doctor. So what?”

“I’m not sure. He spoke Greek fluently, too. Modern Greek. He learned it in the twenties, in the Greek provinces.”

“Are you sure? There was a war going on at the time.”

“Missilonghi, yes. That’s what interests me. Your poet-Byron, Millingen, his doctor.”

“Byron,” Palewski echoed. “It’s Thursday, Yashim. I’ve got an idea.”

“Thursday?” Yashim frowned. It was a ritual, their Thursday dinner; but time was short.

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t-”

“No, no, Yash. It’s quite all right. Tonight, for once, you’ll dine with me.”

Yashim was relieved that he didn’t have to shop or cook. It was already past noon. He dressed with care, and an hour later he presented himself at the door of the sultan’s harem, in Topkapi Palace.

Hyacinth emerged from his little cubicle in the corridor and grinned, showing a row of reddish teeth. “I knew it would be you,” he said softly.

“The valide?”

The elderly eunuch wagged his head and looked serious. “Not receiving today. A little shock. She is resting.”

“Come on, Hyacinth,” Yashim said testily. “Everyone here is resting.”

Hyacinth giggled uncertainly and tapped Yashim on the chest with his fan.

“It seems it’s all your fault, Yashim,” he said. “You and your little favors.”

Yashim blinked. Years ago, when three hundred women or more were cooped up in the harem apartments, attended by a cohort of Black Eunuchs, it was only to be expected that everyone would know everyone else’s business. Now there was only one, the valide, with a handful of girls and a few attendants. But some things never changed.

“The bostanci refused her?”

Hyacinth’s hands fluttered. “I never said a word,” he insisted, raising his eyebrows. “Her Highness is not receiving-anyone.”

Yashim bowed; he admired the glint of steel beneath the black man’s gentle manner. But he wondered what would happen if he brushed him aside and pressed on. Hyacinth, he guessed, was stronger than he looked. A sort of giddiness swept over him. There would be no men-at-arms springing forward to enforce compliance; there never had been. It would never have been necessary.

“Is that you, Yashim?”

The voice from along the passage was unmistakable. Yashim looked up; Hyacinth whirled around.

The valide sultan was advancing very slowly along the passageway, one hand gripping the knob of a stick, the other raised to the shoulder of a girl whose arm was passed around the valide’s waist. What struck Yashim was not that the valide herself was bent, or very frail, or that her knuckles looked huge beneath the thin skin of her hands, but that she was wearing jewels: a welter of diamonds at her ears, around her neck, pearls gleaming from her diadem, and at her breast a lapis brooch with the figure N picked out in ivory. As she stepped forward into the sunlight it seemed to Yashim that she sparkled like a leaf after a storm.

Yashim bowed.

“The bostanci!” The valide stopped and worked her hand on the cane. “Il m’a refuse!”

Hyacinth lowered his eyes. His hands were draped around his enormous belly. The girl cast a frightened glance at Yashim.

The valide set both hands on the head of her cane. Very slowly she drew herself upright.

“Pssht!” She raised her chin. Hyacinth and the girl withdrew, bowing.

“Refused, Yashim,” the valide repeated quietly. “Why not? I am an old woman, far from the seat of power. The bostanci no longer fears me.”

Yashim stepped closer.

“The sultan should have stayed in Topkapi. My son.”

They looked at each other.

“How long, Yashim?”

“A few months,” he said. “Weeks.”

The valide’s hands rubbed together on the head of her stick.

“So little time,” she whispered at last. And then her lip trembled, and to Yashim’s astonishment the corner of her mouth lifted into a regretful smile.

“Men,” she said. “Ils font ce qu’ils veulent.”

They do what they want. Yashim bent his head.

“ Mais les femmes, Yashim. They do what they must.” She turned around. “And you, Yashim, I wonder? Perhaps you do what we need. Give me an arm.”

Slowly, without talking, they made their way back up the corridor to the valide’s courtyard.

The valide lay back on the divan, against a spray of cushions.

“The bostanci makes me tired, Yashim. No, don’t go. I have something to tell you. A coffee?”

Yashim declined. The valide settled the shawl around her legs.

“I thought I would die of loneliness when the sultan moved first to Besiktas. I have not been alone for sixty years, and I had grown so used to people around me, everywhere, at all times. For the first few weeks, I was in mourning, I admit. And you were very charming, to visit me-even if it was only my novels you wanted! No, no. I am teasing.

“But then I discovered something, Yashim. How to explain? Look: there is a little bird which comes to my window every day, to get food. The gardeners showed him to me-I had never noticed him before. Just a little bird! You may laugh, mon ami — but I scattered crumbs.”

Cross-legged on the divan, Yashim hunched forward and stared at his hands. He had a peculiar sense that he knew what the valide was about to describe. Years ago, as a very young man, almost a boy, he had constructed hope.

“Believe me, Yashim, the place was quiet. One little bird- c’est rien. But little by little I began to see that it was not a matter of one bird at all. There were many. And more than birds. The gardener told me there were djinns. He said, ‘Now they have room to breathe, at last!’” The valide paused. “I come from a superstitious island, Yashim.

“Remember the great women who have passed through these apartments, Yashim. People remember them. Kosem Sultan. Turhan Sultan. These are the rooms they kept, the corridors they used. I think of them, and I feel that I am still valide sultan-for them. For all the women who have lived here, within these walls. So many, Yashim.”

He bowed his head. He wanted to say that when one is spent and useless in the world’s eyes, it is still possible to live for others. For the living or the dead.

“Yes, Valide,” he murmured. “I understand.”

She regarded him narrowly.

“I think you do, Yashim. Djinns, ghosts: these are the privileges of age. But like the little birds, there are men of flesh and blood who inhabit this place. One sees them more clearly.”

Her world is shrinking, Yashim thought: the girls, the eunuchs, nothing more. Every day, the circle will grow smaller.

“Don’t suppose I am thinking of Hyacinth or my slaves,” the valide said. “The sultan-and his pashas-may have thought that everything in this palace depended on them, but they were wrong.”

“Valide?”

“Each year, on the same day, someone puts flowers on the column where they displayed the heads of rebels.”

“I see.”

“It’s only an example. But when things are calm and clear, and you watch, you find that many things haven’t changed. I have not changed because I am used to these walls, these courtyards and apartments. Just as the watermen are used to meeting in the arsenal.”